should be made absolutely autonomous and not sections of the Comintern. They must be transformed into national communist parties with diverse denominations: workers’ party, Marxist party, etc. The name is not important. What is important is that they put down roots in their people and concentrate on their own specific tasks… The International was created in Marx’s time in the expectation of an approaching international revolution. The Comintern was created in Lenin’s time at an analogous moment. Today,
Dimitrov had virtually been told that his job was obsolete.
This did not mean that Stalin had given up faith in the ultimate worldwide success of communism; but what Dimitrov was hearing, in an indirect way, was a judgement that the military situation in Europe had become so complex and dangerous that it was no longer to the USSR’s advantage to maintain a co-ordinated communist movement under the direction of the Comintern. Stalin had not abandoned hope of controlling the activity of other communist parties. Instead he had made the provisional judgement that his policy of appeasing Germany would be enhanced if he put distance between his government and the Comintern. Only the outbreak of war with Germany delayed Stalin’s dissolution of the Comintern.
Yet Stalin, while seeking to appease Hitler, wanted to keep up the morale of his own Red Army. On 5 May 1941 he addressed the ceremony for graduates of military academies in Moscow. His words, unreported in the press at the time, were combative. Instead of the reassuring words he issued to the media about Germany, he declared:18
War with Germany is inevitable. If com[rade] Molotov can manage to postpone the war for two or three months through the M[inistry] of F[oreign] Affairs, that will be our good fortune, but you yourselves must go off and take measures to raise the combat readiness of our forces.
Stalin urged the Soviet armed forces to prepare for war.19 He explained:20
Until now we have conducted a peaceful, defensive policy and we’ve also educated our army in this spirit. True, we’ve earned something for our labours by conducting a peaceful policy. But now the situation must be changed. We have a strong and well-armed army.
Stalin continued:
A good defence signifies the need to attack. Attack is the best form of defence… We must now conduct a peaceful, defensive policy with attack. Yes, defence with attack. We must now re-teach our army and our commanders. Educate them in the spirit of attack.
Was this — as some have suggested — the index of an intention to attack Germany within the near future? Undeniably he had no scruples about stabbing friends and allies in the back. Hitler felt and acted the same way, and Nazi propaganda about
